Mismatched
by clockwork starlight
Summary: It was easy, as most trivial things for a villain are, part evil genius, mostly crazy random happenstance. Freshly PhDed, new apartment, new roommate, now in love at first machine mix up.


Because 'Wednesdays and Saturdays except twice last month you skipped the weekend' smacks of horrible, evil not-stalking.

This has been on my computer for months, and is now a bigger wad of dust than my lint trap.

Dr. Horrible totally belongs to Joss Whedon, and I will not begrudge him it.

* * *

It was easy, as most trivial things for a villain are, part evil genius, mostly crazy random happenstance. Freshly PhDed, new apartment, new roommate, now in love at first machine mix up.

Rooming with Moist… gave one an appreciation for dehumidifiers and mothballs. The bathroom was an assortment of mildew and molds that could likely power a small country for a month if tweaked a little (a side project he was working on when he wasn't plotting horrifically brilliant… horrible things). The kitchen… well, he was hoping the next heist would put them in enough cash to have everything in stainless steel. Nickel-plated at least. And Moist was a good enough guy to take a scrub brush to the corners at least twice a week.

It was a fact of life that clothing that spends too much time being wet tends to smell something awful and feel even worse; and there was that small incident with the toaster and its wires not being as insulated, and therefore not as waterproof, as it should have been, considering Moist like grilled cheese sandwiches as much as the next henchman (henchmen were rarely paid well, and Moist was happy enough to live off the cheap stuff. Considering the water damage that was continually getting worse, despite the landlord's best efforts, Billy supposed he needed to conserve his funds. Hey, he understood. His medical costs weren't exactly spare change either. "_Justice_" if that's what it truly was, had a new sap sweeping the streets of crime and wrongdoing, and this Captain Hammer didn't believe in pulling punches).

Anyway. The corresponding amount of laundry that needed to be done that first week was to blame for all the time he spent at the coin wash.

It wasn't like he had a lot of inspiration for evil on Wednesdays, he thought to himself glumly. Laundry, fantastically boring task, didn't require any of his horribly devious brain cells to exert themselves. But even if it was just puttering around in the lair, it just wasn't _right_… err _wrong_ to have anything but a clean white labcoat. It was about standards.

The smell of detergent was fighting a losing battle with the cumin still in his lungs. But lunch, a good Indian place down the street, was infinitely more interesting than watching clothes spin around on their closed loop course, like the mindless grind of civilian life, no purpose but lather, rinse, drain, repeat. A pointless cycle he had every intention of remedying for the average joe. In perhaps a slightly less orthodox manner, but still, tough love meant not always getting the sugar to help the medicine shoved down your throat.

He opened the dryer to get his stuff, reached in and—Oh god those were NOT his.

There was a soft yelp from behind him.

"Oh I'm so sorry. It's just that there were no free dryers, and I volunteer in the afternoon and I didn't know— Here, I folded your things for you." The girl looked sheepish and held out her laundry basket, his hoodies and jeans neatly folded, 'Penny' written in black sharpie on the edge of the standard blue plastic bin that everyone owned because they inherited it from their mother. Carefully he put the delicate white… underthings back in the dryer, and with markedly more composure than he actually had, said it was no problem and he should be the one that was sorry, took his things, eye twitching like mad, and fled. The only thing in his head, aside from dying of embarrassment, was that she was cute, and maybe he'd see her again next week.

* * *

Could he really justify waiting around for one load of laundry? He'd been taking his sweet time and she wasn't here yet, even though he'd come in the exact same time as he had last week. It was the villain thing, never stand out too much, never do anything memorable, unless you had the room at your mercy. Keep to the mildly mannered alter id and all anyone would remember was 'quirky'. Draw attention to yourself and kiss anonymity good bye, and a pair of handcuffs hello. He needed to plan, needed to figure out her schedule without being creepy stalker. Or at least, being caught being creepy stalker. He didn't have enough laundry to stake the place out every day of the week for hours on end, just to find out when she'd be there.

Oh! There was that thing that the henchwenches did in the Kappa Kappa Kappa dorms that made them take up five machines at once, or one for a good five hours. Sorting laundry. That would come in handy, at least until he figured out her schedule. He bought a few more blue and brown clothes, just to have a reasonable darks load. It seemed such a waste to have a separate wash for a mere two hoodies, his best attempts at blending in with the rest of the wage slaves.

She was worth it though. He didn't know how or why, but it was like when he opted for villainy over becoming a corporate cog. There was no doubt his inventions would have been perfected and mass produced to feed a power hungry market well before he even got his degree. But that was no way to go about fixing humanity, giving the worst elements in it the most power. He just knew.

Unfortunately, but forgivably, Penny wasn't blessed with his horribly brilliant mind. She didn't feel that electricity, that second when it seemed as if time stood still while the world kept on its well worn axle… now there was an idea. Calibrate an electrical discharge to normalize the…

New project. After he got the girl. Nice guys finished last. He, Billy, was Dr. Horrible, and he had a PhD in Horribleness, so he was the farthest thing from a nice guy ever. Right?


End file.
